Tough week to be a PM, credit or otherwise. October's losses finally showed up in the letters, the platforms started handing out exits, and on Thursday the Nasdaq had its worst day in 19 months. If you're still locked in and at your desk, congratulations. If you're reading this from a new desk, congratulations.
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The Open
Credit's biggest pain trade moved from the bonds to the people holding them. Arini's flagship fund lost almost a fifth of its value in October, Millennium and Brevan Howard cut multiple credit teams, and ING put half a billion dollars of data center loans up for auction. Then on Thursday the Nasdaq fell 5.5%, its worst day since April 2025, and junk followed it down. The twist: CCCs barely moved. This time, BBs and Bs took the hit.
If you read nothing else:
Arini's main fund is down 32% for the year after a 19.7% loss in October, and it has cut leverage to the lowest since early 2022, per an investor letter seen by Bloomberg. More on this below.
Millennium is losing two more credit pods and Brevan Howard lost five credit PMs, the latest fallout from a brutal October for multi-manager platforms.
ING is auctioning about $500 million of data center loans, including a slice of Stargate New Mexico, with bids due Nov 19.
Headlines
Bigger partnership. Goldman named 109 new partners, its biggest class since 2010 but neglected to provide the female percentage for the first time since CEO David Solomon took over in 2018.
Anthropic marks itself down. Some investors now see $1tn to $1.25tn for the IPO, down from a hoped-for $2tn, with the roadshow expected next week.
Seoul caught it too. The Kospi fell 5.28% Thursday on fears of delayed data center projects and chip orders.
Walleye shrinks. The $17bn multi-manager lost 5.9% in October, its worst month since March 2020, and is cutting its internal equity long/short unit and returning capital.
Brightspeed wants new money. Apollo's broadband provider is in talks with creditors for $2 billion to $3 billion of fresh capital, and the amount and whether it would go through a court process are still being worked out, Bloomberg reported.
FOGO. Elliott, the $80bn hedge fund, told investors the market looks like the Roaring '20s before the Great Depression, warning of a "fear of getting obliterated." New acronym.
The LBO pipeline lives. Goldman, BofA and Barclays are leading a $3.1bn loan and bond package for CD&R and McKesson's Option Care Health buyout.
A $1 billion loan gets pulled. KPS-backed Autokiniton shelved an amend-and-extend of its roughly $1 billion loan after already improving terms to a 2030 maturity, 97.5 and 4.75 percentage points over the benchmark, Bloomberg reported.
Coffey's worst month. Kirkoswald lost more than 6% in October, its worst month on record, though it's still up more than 16% this year.
The Tape
The selloff climbed the ladder. HY OAS widened 22bp on the week to 348bp on Nov 5, the widest since May 2025, and the HY yield rose to 8.07%. Single-Bs led, 35bp wider at 367bp, and BBs widened 19bp to 213bp. Both are the widest since March.
CCCs sat this one out. CCC & lower OAS came in 5bp to 1,320bp, still 432bp wider on the year. When you can't sell what you want, you sell what you can.
Loans are on sale, and the CLO crowd noticed. More than 90% of leveraged loans traded below par last week, the most in almost 18 months. Carlyle, KKR and Oaktree are weighing buying loans to package into new CLOs, and about 286 warehouse lines are open, per Bloomberg.
Bond Movers
CoreWeave 9.75% 2031s traded as low as 79.5 Wednesday, with the 2030s and 2032s yielding over 15%, on fears of state limits on new data centers (Trace via Bloomberg).
Acrisure 2030s rose to about 87 from 81 on Monday, after Q3 broker retention improved to 84.2%. Some lenders had seen an internal spreadsheet left in a creditor presentation in September and were asked not to act on it.
New Paper
TKO prints secured for buybacks. TKO priced $1 billion of 6.5% senior secured notes due 2031, with proceeds that may fund distributions for its share repurchase program. Strong credits can still borrow to pay shareholders. Everyone else is paying lenders.
Baldwin tests the loan market. Morgan Stanley is marketing $2.3 billion of seven-year loans at SOFR+350 and 99 to back the $7.7 billion take-private of Baldwin Insurance by Michael Dell's family office and Sequence Holdings, with a $750 million second lien placed privately. Commitments are due Nov 12. It was only the second leveraged loan launched that week.
Hot Topic: The Credit Pod Purge
What's happening: Arini's master fund lost 19.7% in October and is down 32% for the year, Bloomberg reported. According to its investor letter, the firm re-underwrote its five largest positions, which represent about two-thirds of NAV, cut gross leverage to the lowest since early 2022 and sold some holdings, while taking in $389 million of new money as part of a $1.5 billion raise. Millennium is losing two internal credit pods, Abacove and Twin Lights, after pulling more than $1.5 billion of leveraged capital from external managers Troluce and Axebrook following steep losses. At Brevan Howard, five credit portfolio managers are said to have left while credit head Andy Silver moves into an advisory role.
Why now: October hit everyone at once. Millennium lost 2.3%, Balyasny 3.4% and ExodusPoint 2.4%, per Bloomberg. Brevan's Alpha Strategies fund lost about 1%, erasing its gains for the year. Arini blamed technicals, including limits on CLO buying of CCCs and aggressive short selling, and acknowledged it underestimated the disruption.
Arini was down about 26% for the year through Oct 23 and finished October down 32% year to date. Its loss for the full month was 19.7%, per the letter. After reviewing asset coverage, liquidity, recovery prospects and creditor protections, Arini said it remains confident in its largest holdings and plans to diversify the book. Sales so far have focused on more liquid, better-performing assets. Lemssouguer also met with investors and spoke onstage at Bank of America's recent industry conference in Miami.
The platforms are running the same math at a larger scale. Millennium's October loss cut its year-to-date gain to 5.7%, Balyasny is down 2.7% for the year and ExodusPoint's year-to-date gain is 1.6%, per Hedgeweek. Multi-strategy platforms turn over about 20% of their portfolio managers in a typical year, and October pulled that process forward. Further risk cuts, and further forced sales, could spread selling pressure beyond crowded technology positions into otherwise sound investments.
What's at stake: Platforms run on hard drawdown limits. When they cut a team, the book gets sold on the platform's schedule, not the market's. Arini is the bigger version of the same problem: its book includes Altice International, Brightspeed and Aston Martin, and some holdings are already being offered to buyers. When the biggest buyers are also sellers, it's hard to find a price.
What to watch: Arini's November number and whether its top five positions hold, any Brightspeed filing, year-end redemption notices, and whether pod cuts spread from credit to the rest of the platforms.
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Pressure Points
Data centers: ING rings the bell. ING is selling a portfolio of 12 data center loans worth about $500 million through a BWIC, including a $25 million piece of Stargate New Mexico and loans tied to Vantage and CyrusOne, with bids due Nov 19. Banks lend to distribute, and this is the distribute part. It landed the same week CDS on CoreWeave, SpaceX and Broadcom hit records and the Nasdaq lost 5.5% in a day. The bid for AI infrastructure debt is now a price discovery exercise.
Brightspeed: new CEO, same debt. Apollo's broadband provider named Shawn O'Donnell, who ran FTI Consulting's Americas TMT practice, as CEO. Michel Combes stays as chairman. Brightspeed is reportedly preparing to file as soon as December and is seeking asset-backed financing on its fiber network. New Street estimates it needs about $3 billion to fund itself through 2027, against $1.2 billion of cash and $11.6 billion of gross debt. When the new CEO comes from the restructuring bench, lenders can read the job description.
Docket Watch
LIV Golf: buy the DIP, stay in the game. BC Partners is seeking to buy PIF's $50 million debtor-in-possession loan to LIV Golf, giving it leverage over the Chapter 11 process as it works on a successor league, the FT reported. The move follows the collapse of its earlier rescue plan and LIV's decision to liquidate. This is a proposed loan purchase, not an agreed rescue. The fairway back runs through the capital structure.
Mercer International. The pulp maker agreed a recapitalization, to run through a prepackaged Chapter 11 in Houston, that swaps about $1.1 billion of notes for equity and raises $400 million of new money, with more than 87% of noteholders signed. Shareholders keep about 8.5% of the new stock.
Cerca Trova. Outback's California-based franchisee filed in Delaware with $449 million of debt, 61 locations and a $26.3 million stalking horse bid from Bloomin' Brands, which is also providing up to $5.5 million of DIP financing.
Downgrades & Defaults
Elevate Textiles went to CCC from CCC+ at S&P, with more than $385 million of term loans due September 2027.
Private Credit
Two BDCs, two tapes. Goldman Sachs BDC's non-accruals rose to 4.2% of the portfolio at fair value from 2.9%, and to 7.3% at cost from 5.0%, across 11 companies. NAV fell 3% to $11.70, and new non-accruals included HungerRush, Center for Sight, ATX Networks and Streamland Media. Blue Owl Capital Corp. reported non-accruals of 0.8% at fair value and 2.9% at cost, with NAV of $14.32 a share. Same asset class, very different quarter.
Street Chatter
The desks are emptying faster than the landing pages are filling up. Weil told remaining equity partners in a memo that they will be deemed withdrawn by Dec 31 and can keep their profit share, and that it will not enforce notice periods past that date, Bloomberg Law reported. That is the wind-down's off-ramp: they can leave now without giving up what's left of the pool. A few landings are signed: Ramona Nee is joining Kirkland with a group of 40 private equity, M&A and debt finance lawyers, per Kirkland's statement. Gibson Dunn is in talks with about 120 of Weil's funds lawyers in New York and London, including about 20 partners (talks, not a signed move). Many other Weil lawyers are still looking. On the buy-side, five credit PMs have left Brevan Howard and two credit pods are leaving Millennium, and most have not said where they go next. Confirmed seats are the exception this week.
People Moves
Ryan Nelson, former co-head of prime services at Credit Suisse when Archegos blew up in 2021, is Jain Global's new head of separately managed account investments in London, per eFinancialCareers. He most recently ran EMEA portfolio construction at Boothbay.
Phil Saliba, a three-decade Deutsche Bank veteran and most recently its head of restructuring capital markets, joined Wells Fargo as a managing director in leveraged finance focused on restructuring. He reports to co-heads Alex Barth and Trip Morris.
Dominick Maggio and Amit Agrawal (Abacove) and Mark Meenan and David Ulrich (Twin Lights) are leaving Millennium with their credit pods. Senior credit trader Manav Gupta has also left, less than six months after moving his fund onto the platform.
Ramona Nee, Weil's former leader-in-waiting, is joining Kirkland & Ellis with a group of 40 private equity, M&A and debt finance lawyers.
Macro & Calendar: Up Ahead
Payrolls rose 165,000 in October against 59,000 expected, unemployment dipped to 4.1% and hourly earnings rose 0.4% on the month. Futures now price about a 77% chance of a hike on Dec 9, per CNBC. The 10-year still ended the week down about 7bp at 4.86%. Next week: October CPI on Tuesday (+0.3% headline, +0.2% core), $125 billion of refunding auctions, and a bond market holiday Wednesday. A hot CPI would land on a market that just learned BBs can widen too.
Chart of the Week
The selloff climbed the ladder. In one week, Single-B spreads widened 35bp and BBs 19bp, both to their widest since March, while CCCs tightened 5bp. All year the pain sat in CCCs. This week the better credits paid the bill.
Source: ICE BofA via FRED, Oct 29 to Nov 5, 2026.
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